DVD and Blu-ray Picks for March 18 - 24

This week brings Frozen to Blu-ray and DVD, which is funny because the film is still playing in theaters, and is in the top ten, box office-wise. There’s also some Oscar also-rans hitting as well, and some great Criterion catalog stuff.

Frozen: Winner of two academy awards, Frozen is the film that parents and children are currently gushing over. I liked the politics of it, and it’s clever enough, but I don’t get why it turned into such a huge phenomenon. It’s really good, but perhaps it’s that it feels old school.

Saving Mr. Banks: Speaking of Oscar movies, this one got shut out for the major awards, even though it was made to be Oscar bait. Tom Hanks stars as Walt Disney in this story of the making of Mary Poppins. I have no interest in ever watching this film.

Kill Your Darlings: Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan star as Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr in this arthouse misfire. For some reason the beat generation has been the fuel for a couple indie pictures of late. Perhaps it’s in the water.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom: Speaking of Oscar films that didn’t connect, Idris Elba stars as the famously imprisoned Nelson Mandela, the man who helped bring an end to apartheid. But it just wasn’t good enough to get a nomination outside of a song by U2.

Classics:

A Brief History of Time, The Hidden Fortress: Two classics from Criterion, it’s worth noting that The Hidden Fortressis a blast, and easily Akira Kurosawa’s most accessible movie for those unfamiliar with his work. Also, influential on George Lucas.

The Black Stallion: It fees like this film, which was once revered as a great kids movie, has fallen off the radar. It shouldn’t have. It’s a great film.

Mysterious Skin: Greg Araki’s most respected film was also the moment that people started taking Joseph Gordon-Levitt seriously.

The Slumber Party Massacre: Scream Factory is working on bringing every memorable VHS cover to Blu-ray.

I will never forget watching Mysterious Skin. It deeply affected me even though the subject matter isn’t anything I can relate to from personal experience. What a powerful film, and a tremendous performance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who has always been a fantastic actor, even as a child. (And I’d say his breakthrough as an adult happened even earlier than Mysterious Skin, in 2001′s Manic opposite Don Cheadle.)

Gordon-Levitt might well be the most talented, versatile, and ironically popular-yet-underrated actor of his generation. I love him in all the roles he’s undertaken, and Mysterious Skin is one of his best, so I’ll definitely pick this up.

Damon worked in the film business as a Film Buyer for a theater chain for many years, which gives him an interesting perspective on the numbers. He's written for Collider, Chud, Screencrush, The DVD Journal and Binaryflix online, and was published by The New York Times and Willamette Week, along with his college, high school and middle school papers.